Ruzy Suliza Hashim
@vizja.pl
School of Humanities and Fine Arts
University of Economics and Human Sciences
EDUCATION
BA Hons (English). University of Otago, New Zealand.
Diploma of Education. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.
MA (Sociology of Literature), University of Essex, UK.
PhD (English). University of Otago, New Zealand.
RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS
Literature and Literary Theory, Language and Linguistics, Arts and Humanities
Scopus Publications
Scopus Publications
Abeer Mahmoud Oreiq, Ravichandran Vengadasamy, and Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
Ruikai Yuan, Ravichandran Vengadasamy, Melissa Shamini Perry, and Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
Siti Hawa Muhamad, Raihanah Mohd Mydin, and Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
M Ikbal M Alosman and Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
Mohd Muzhafar Idrus, Habibah Ismail, Bahiyah Dato Haji Abd Hamid, and Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Routledge
ADZURA ELIER, , M. M. RAIHANAH, RUZY SULIZA HASHIM, , and
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
This is a review paper on the apparent force of commercial success and social media presence being a key in the changes of female representation in popular culture using The Hunger Games dystopian trilogy’s global commercial success and its impact as case in point. It argues that the trilogy’s commercial success is valuable in helping normalise the flipped gender roles or subverting the stereotypical gender primes. While dystopian literature supposedly features worlds and societies beyond typical real-life rules, many parts of that fictional world will still exhibit traits and beliefs contemporary to its author and resonate with its audience. The normalisation of gender stereotypes can often be seen in characters and social dynamics portrayed repeatedly throughout other forms of media communication. These and other literary works carry within it these stereotypical traits or behaviours a shorthand frame of reference which are called tropes. In this paper, the tropes are viewed through the sociological lens called stereotype priming which is the perpetuation of stereotypes through systemic means targeting certain behaviours, traits or beliefs. This paper looks at instances of tropes exhibiting priming functions within the dystopian world of not just The Hunger Games trilogy and how the commercial success of the empowered female has paved the way for more positive female representation in popular media culture since then. This lens has been expanded to take into account how The Hunger Games trilogy continues to have relevance post-pandemic regarding issues that current facts have brought dangerously close to dystopian fiction. Keywords: Dystopian narrative, gender, popular media, popular culture, stereotypes.
Ruzy Suliza Hashim, Mohd Muzhafar Idrus, and Mary Ellen Gidah
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
Nor Faridah Abdul Manaf and Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Routledge
Siow See Khoo, , Ruzy Suliza Hashim, M.M. Raihanah, , and
Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia
Motivated by the theme of cultural diversity in Hilary Tham’s Tin Mines and Concubines (2005), a Malaysian fiction that depicts various family stories of multiethnic Malaysians in the 1960s, this article examines the ways in which the author draws on her cultural memories of Malaysian society through the lens of ecocriticism. While cultural memories convey the memories embedded in physical monuments, eco-cultural memories signify memories implanted in ecological substances. Eco-cultural memories entwine both natural and cultural aspects and are essential to the subject of ecocriticism, which emphasises human-non-human links. The research sheds light on Malaysia’s varied cultures by examining cultural memories incorporating animal, plant and culinary aspects. Tham’s perceptions of cultural variety vary according to ethnic origins, cultural upbringing, belief systems, social classes, cultural practices and experiences. In general, examining Tham’s eco-cultural recollections about bodily functions, weddings, superstitions, cultural alienation and social class reveals how the organic relationship between the animal, food and plant components fosters intercultural consciousness and interracial mutual understanding and misunderstanding in Malaysian society.
Mohd Fadhli Shah Khaidzir, Ruzy Suliza Hashim, and Noraini Md Yusof
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
Mohd Fadhli Shah Khaidzir, Ruzy Suliza Hashim, and Noraini Md. Yusof
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
Travellers’ enthusiasm can drive them to explore new locations, especially those that are unknown and foreign to their eyes. Nor Faridah Abdul Manaf's anthology of poetry, The Art of Naming (2006) reflects the people and locations that played a significant role in crafting her poems. Using the role of a flâneur, which is closely related to the theory of psychogeography, we investigate how Nor Faridah, as a flâneuse (a female flâneur), wanders and strolls through the places she reconnoiters, and how her mental and behavioural aspects as a human being are affected by her environment. Her poems depict a strong perception, involvement, and representation of images focused on the immediate encounter of the urban cities visited, which serve as valuable pieces of evidence flâneurs while walking. Based on the analysis, the different places visited by the poet exhibit her values of humanity including empathy, generosity and love. Thus, Nor Faridah’s works illuminate the position of flâneur and flâneuse, demonstrating how spaces, contrary to what is thought to be pointless roaming, actually offer insights into understanding relationship between people and their locations. As a consequence, space and position are dialectically organised in human environmental history, since her sense of space is related to the locations she inhabits, which derive meaning from their spatial significance. Keywords Psychogeography; Flâneur; Flâneuse; Place; Nor Faridah Abdul Manaf
Ahmad Muhyiddin Yusof, Anita Harris Satkunananthan, Ruzy Suliza Hashim, and NorLiyana Mohmad Rosli
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
This study analyses the Malay folkloric trope of the Nenek Kebayan and how this supernatural figure is connected to the Gothic trope of the haunted house in selected horror films. This study contends that the figure of the Nenek Kebayan is instrumental in the haunting effect of these homes. Three horror films have therefore been chosen to analyse the motif of the Nenek Kebayan and the haunted house which are Congkak (2005), Al-Hijab (2011) and additionally, the figure of the Nenek Kebayan is compared to the figure of the spectral Witch in The Conjuring (2013). In so doing, this study adapts the Structural Uncanny Haunted House Framework (SUHHF) as a theoretical framework. SUHHF is an Uncanny adaptation of Joshua Comaroff’s and Ong Ker-Shing’s concept of the architecture of horror. SUHHF focuses primarily on three aspects of the haunted house which are The Surmounted Corpse that provides insights to the external and internal layer of the house, The Hazardous Transition that explains the application of the transitional elements of the haunted house and finally the Trojan Compartment that reveals the secret spaces in the haunted house. Furthermore, filmic technique is deployed as a methodology to capture the moments of haunting by the Nenek Kebayan and her cognate, the Witch. The implication of this study to provide a deeper appreciation and understanding in regards to aspect of the Nenek Kebayan and the haunted house setting in the examined films.
Mohd Muzhafar Idrus, Ruzy Suliza Hashim, and Raihanah Mohd Mydin
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
The fluid realities of youth in postcolonial nation-states can reflect changing and challenging landscapes. Their engagements with environment, for example, are not only elaborated in social, political, and economical contexts, but also generated through values, beliefs, and identities. This article adds to contemporary debates by positing that discussions on postcolonial civic identities have to be accompanied by youth narratives and their considerations on nature, time, and digital world(s) by taking Malaysian youths as examples. Specifically, it attempts to theorize youth civic identity within postcolonial context(s) by scrutinizing personal narratives that are symbiotically yoked with discourses on ecology and technology. Through administering personal narratives at a suburban district in West Peninsular Malaysia, this paper opens ‘windows’ into what it means for youths to participate in civic projects. Reading these narratives from the lens of growth into citizenship , their wide-ranging experiences in civic affairs can be understood in four ways, namely, recognition, responsibilities, reconciliation, and reciprocity. Two of these emerging themes, recognition and responsibilities, will be discussed in this article. Our attempt at depicting postcolonial civic identity, therefore, is part of a large-scale investigation on civic mindedness that will compel us to reflect on unofficial, continuous accounts of youth reflecting on a sense of belongingness and what the future might bring.
Hiba Meteab Faja, Ruzy Suliza Hashim, and Amrah Abdul Majid
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
Due to the complex intersecting parameters of identity, race, class, and history of Jean Rhys’ writing life, her works allow for interpretation from various disciplines. Rhys' writings reveal the realities of people caught in the complexity of such a web. Her 1934 novel Voyage in the Dark provides insights into the life of Anna Morgan, the heroine of this novel who moves from her home in Dominica to England to face the entire psychological and social struggle by her journey that ends her up with destruction caused by the challenges that seem to conspire to her tragic fate. In understanding the life of Anna Morgan, the woman who has been told that she will “get used” to her circumstances, the concept of alterity is a useful reading approach in unveiling the push and pull factors that drive her to her downfall. As a concept, alterity is explained in this paper through making overt the structure of the novel that exposes various factors that markedly contain facets of alterity such as alienation, assimilation, and separation. By appropriating this reading lens, we hope to show how multiple factors machinate to show the systematic ways in which Anna Morgan’s fate is sealed when the heroine herself and others around her cannot accept otherness and fusion. Keywords: Jean Rhys; alterity; gender; class; ethnicity
Kim Hua Tan, Hazita Azman, Imran Ho Abdullah, Ruzy Suliza Hashim, Hajar Abdul Rahim, Mohd Muzhafar Idrus, Nur Ehsan Mohd Said, Robert Lew, and Iztok Kosem
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
The emergence of COVID-19 affects the world population in many ways, resulting in its own specialised discourse. In addition to providing a source of data for analysis, this discourse has also led to a rethinking of multifarious research methods. This section presents a series of articles by scholars from different parts of the world with macro- and micro-linguistic perspectives, ranging from corpus-based analysis to content analysis studies. At the macro level, these scholars explored ways through which government bodies communicate with the public. Official announcements, parliamentary proceedings and COVID-19-related corpora are examined and a comparative textual analysis between the Malaysian and British governments is provided. At the micro level, the scholars analysed selected corpora with lexical, semantic, and discourse foci and personal posts of short narratives and photos to encapsulate meanings from human life and experience. The main takeaway from these studies is the application of a wide range of methods for different focus and perspectives that may be customised to the researcher’s unique context. Keywords: COVID-19, corpus-based approach, comparative textual analysis, qualitative content analysis, lexical neologism
Ayshath Shamah Rahmath, Raihanah Mohd Mydin, and Ruzy Suliza Hashim
ACCB Publishing
The grand narratives of Mother India posit women’s emancipation as the central concern, insisting on her public participation in the educational and economic sectors. The relegation of the archetypal motherhood to the national periphery is strictly rooted in the Hindu traditional culture. The schisms of caste, class, and religion in contemporary society are normalised whilst the gendered undercurrents of domestic violence, chauvinism and religious sensibilities are ignored. Such polished idealisms are, in fact, far from the living reality of most women and girls across all spheres in the country. By reviewing notable texts from past and present, this research problematises the position of Muslim women in India, specifically during the nationalistic discourse and post-independent era. The national freedom struggle movement assured a democratic constitution, which primed Mother India as the figurative Indian woman encrypting ideologies from socio-religious discourses. The grand narratives often become instrumental in politicising the vested interest of the hegemonic class. The struggles of Muslim women were foregrounded not only in the gendered disparity of the religious domain but also in the socio-cultural disparities which excluded them from the domain of Indian womanhood. Mainstream history, literature and even women development organisations deliberately typified Muslim women along with the religious discourse. Briefly, in this paper, we infer that Muslim women were rendered invisible in the limelight of the archetypal Mother India, denying their social, political, cultural and literary participation. They were thus subjected to constitutional othering by the mainstream socio-political entities (who subjected them) at the onset of nationalism, which continues to exist in post-colonial discourses where women are expected to constantly negotiate their religious identity over their national identity.
Radha M K Nambiar, Noraini Ibrahim, Ruzy Suliza Hashim, Ruhizan Mohammad Yasin, Hazita Azman, Noraini Mohd. Yusof, Rashila Ramli, and Rosniah Mustaffa
Horizon Research Publishing Co., Ltd.
This paper discusses the impact of a local culture-based longitudinal English language reading program on secondary school students’ skill development and confidence. This program named as Your Language My Culture (YLMC) was the brainchild of a team of local university researchers from secondary schools in the state of Terengganu in Malaysia. Its main objective was to help in improving English competency while instilling local culture awareness among Malaysian youth. The underlying premise was that familiarity with cultural elements (in this case local culture) would provide the schema to facilitate learning and communicating in English. Three supplementary reading modules focusing on local culture and content were developed for use among students from Forms One to Three. After three years of exposure to the local content, a survey was carried out among teachers and students to examine the impact on students’ skill development and confidence in using English language. Furthermore, focus group interviews with teachers and students were carried out concomitantly throughout the three-year period. The findings revealed an enhanced understanding regarding the manner in which the module utilization impacted the development of reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills in English amongst these students. The responses obtained from the teachers and students alike depicted the students’ skills that were sharpened, attributable mainly to their increased level of confidence.
Areej Almutairi, Raihanah M. Mydin, and Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
Although the world now has largely become a global village, some bicultural individuals still find it challenging to be accepted into certain societies. Building on this argument, this article analyzes the struggles faced by the bicultural character in The Bamboo Stalk (2015), a novel written by the Kuwaiti writer, Saud Alsanousi. Jose is the son of a Filipino maid and a wealthy Kuwaiti man. Upon birth, he was disowned by his paternal family and was forced to leave for Manila with his mother, to be raised in poverty. In this article, the theory of graft by Colin Richards and selected concepts on biculturalism are appropriated to explore the manifestations of the grafted individual’s identity construction, demonstrating how grafting carries a negative impact in the formation of the individual’s social, religious and national identities. The narrative depicts the protagonist’s dilemma and identity crisis, revealing the circumstances that has led to the formation of his split identity. While the grafted individual finds it challenging to ascertain his identity that lies between two vastly different and incompatible cultures, the majority societies in the two cultures do not accept him for who he really his. This paper therefore highlights the experience of the bicultural in establishing a clear grafted identity as presented in Alsanousi’s work .
M. Ikbal M. Alosman, Raihanah M. M., and Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
In the aftermath of 9/11 terrorist attacks, Islam and Muslims became the subject of representation in the American literary milieu. American novelist Andre Dubus III was one of those who have appropriated the attacks directly by characterizing 9/11 hijackers within his bestseller novel, The Garden of Last Days (2009). This paper sets out to investigate Andre Dubus’ III demonstration of Islam and Muslims in line with their association with terrorism and intolerance towards non-Muslims. We also seek to contextualize Dubus’ exemplification of the Muslim Other within pertaining geopolitical and Orientalist inferences. As post-9/11 literature has been highly immersed in the cultural, colonial and political ramifications of the attacks, both postcolonial and geopolitical concepts are incorporated into a geopolitical postcolonial approach. Geopolitical postcolonial approach is meant to illustrate the narrative’s exemplification of Islam and Muslim in view of the geopolitical consequences of 9/11 attacks as well as the long established Western knowledge about the Orient, Orientalism. Architectures of enmity are the deliberated schemes exploited to shape the other into a differentiated and abhorred adversary to initiate violence against him/her. Dubus’ architectures of enmity will be examined within four constructs, specifically, ‘hatred,’ ‘Islamic agency,’ ‘clashing Islam’ and ‘Arabic antagonism.’ In The Garden of Last Days , the Muslim Other is exemplified as the enemy of the West. Islam is illustrated as an antagonist ideology that leads Muslims to hate all non-Muslims. Through the geopolitical postcolonial lens we expose the circumstantial implications of these representations and relate them to their due context.
Mohd Muzhafar Idrus, Nor Fariza Mohd Nor, Ruzy Suliza Hashim, and Raihanah Mohd Mydin
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
In mentoring graduate students, it is hard to deny the ubiquity of graduate student advising. Faculty members, who are usually engaged in advising to tease out problems and suggest solutions, could often times be faced with negative attributions concerning faculty members’ competence, as well as receive unaligned responses rather than collaborative understanding of issues or recommendations. While previous studies on advising may have focused on specific, intricate, discourse particles and microscopic perspectives on advising, studies on advice giving exchanges that depart from these dimensions are insufficient. To fill in this lacuna, this paper proposes to explore strategies and participation roles in which faculty members assume in selected doctoral dissertation advising. Through discourse analysis, specifically focusing on discourse and situational identities grounded in identities-in-interaction (Zimmerman, 1998), the study illuminates some of the many advising roles and advising strategies that are revealed as legitimate, aligning doctoral student learning experience. In particular, advising roles and advising strategies, as illustrated in this study, link social and institutional context by proposing some of the many trajectories of how both faculty members and graduate students understand the relevance of advising exchanges. By focusing on these exchanges, the paper will also contribute to the growing body of literature on a range of different factors that may constitute advising in terms of content and manner in which advising takes place.
Radha M K Nambiar, Ruzy Suliza Hashim, and Ruhizan Mohammad Yasin
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)
The importance of culture in learning a language is widely acknowledged even if the integration of culture into language learning and teaching materials has seen various opinions and approaches. Bearing in mind the ultimate aim of learning a language is for communication it is important materials developed for language learning consider content knowledge and linguistic knowledge. This paper discusses the impact of a supplementary reading module designed to improve communicative ability and cultural awareness with the integration of local culture. Focus group interviews were run over a three -year period with lower secondary students and English language teachers to elicit their perspectives on the value of the module and the benefits in helping to develop better communicative ability. Both teachers and students were asked similar questions about their opinions of the module, opinions about the lessons and on the use of English to teach the module. The responses matched with both claiming the module was interesting, attractive and varied in approach with a range of activities in each lesson that fostered communicative and collaborative skills. The findings imply improved cultural knowledge and awareness of local content did provide learners with ideas to harness which subsequently leads to improved communicative ability. Keywords: Language materials, communicative ability; supplementary reading programme; cultural knowledge; cultural awareness